Bone marrow donor describes his experience

Thursday

Nov 29, 2012 at 3:15 AM

By John Nolanjnolan@fosters.com

ROCHESTER — Back in January, a website that 21-year-old Rochester resident Eamon Bisbee follows, posted that American Express, for that month, was offering to cover the cost of donating bone marrow. Along with a couple of dozen other folks, he signed up at www.bethematch.org the online presence of the National Bone Marrow Donor program.

At the outset, this website dispenses with two myths — that donating bone marrow is painful and costly. It is neither, thanks to advances in modern medicine and the generosity of financial supporters.

Within days, Bisbee received a sample kit in the mail from the NBMD center in Minneapolis, Minn.

“You swab your cheek with a Q tip-like object, put it back in the package, and send it back to Minnesota,” said Bisbee, speaking last week in Rochester Public Library, where his mother, Marie Kelly, is the Children’s Librarian.

That was in February, and by June, he had received word that his bone marrow was a potential match for someone.

“Sometimes people are on the registry for 10 to 20 years before they are called,” said Bisbee.

The next step for him was, on July 5, to go to a laboratory in Rochester and have blood drawn which was immediately sent off to Minnesota for analysis.

In early September, he received a letter saying that he was a match, but that the intended recipient was not ready to undergo the bone marrow transfusion. Then, in mid-September, Bisbee got a phone call saying the patient’s status had changed, and he was asked if he was willing to go ahead.

He answered a series of medical questions and then had to travel to Mass General in Boston for a medical examination that included the drawing of more blood, a chest X-ray and an EKG — with American Express, through the Bone Marrow Registry, paying for the whole process.

On Oct. 26, he returned to Mass General for his first injection of Neupogen, which induces the body to produce more bone marrow stem cells. For the following few days, a Rochester visiting nurse repeated these injections, giving them in Bisbee’s arms, alternatingly. He endured the side effects of headaches and bone pains, which were none too serious, but neither could he do any heavy lifting during this period.

“I work in the meat department at Market Basket. My manager there was very understanding, and he allowed me 10 days off,” said Bisbee.

On Oct. 29, just as Hurricane Sandy was hitting, he and his mom drove to Boston and stayed overnight in the Holiday Inn close to Mass General, ready for the bone marrow donation, slated to begin at 7:30 a.m. the following morning.

Meanwhile, the intended recipient of Bisbee’s bone marrow, around 10 days earlier, had undergone a high dose of chemotherapy to kill off his/her existing cells, and leaving the patient without an immune system. This is called the point of no return, but in such critical circumstances it may be the only hope for the patient’s survival.

On Oct. 30, at Mass General, for almost six hours, Bisbee underwent Apheresis — the medical technology in which the blood of a donor is passed through an apparatus that separates out one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation.

He had an I.V. inserted into his right arm which pulled blood out, ran it through a machine, and returned it to his body via his left wrist.

During this time, although on a hospital bed, he was able to wear a T-shirt and jeans, watch TV and even talk about his ongoing experience on Facebook to friends and relatives.

He received replies of encouragement, and a few tentative enquiries about whether it hurt or not, to which he was able to reply, “Not really!”

The whole process relieved him of less than a pint of blood, and after he was unhooked from the machine, medical staff checked his platelet and white blood cell counts. These came back at just over the acceptable level, and, after a second check, he was released. He was able to see the courier arrive, pick up his donated cells and head off to the airport from where they were to be flown to New Jersey. Thankfully, Hurricane Sandy had abated sufficiently by this time to allow it to happen.

Back home in Rochester, Bisbee was contacted by the Bone Marrow Registry the next day, and also a week later to check he was feeling okay. The next contact will be on Friday, Nov. 30 — a month after his donation.

Although he has learned that the recipient of his stem cells is now doing well, Bisbee has no idea who he or she is, nor in which part of the United States they live.

“There is no direct contact with the recipient in the first year, but you can send communications to an anonymous person via the registry,” he said. “After a year, if both parties are agreeable, they put you in touch. I would like to meet the recipient, and see how it went.”

Sitting in the Children’s Room of Rochester Public Library, Marie Kelly smiled at her son.

“I am so proud of him,” she said.

Bisbee and Kelly encourage anyone with a thought to donating bone marrow to visit www.bethematch.org.

“You are quite literally saving a life,” said Kelly.

“And at no cost to the donor — just time and a little discomfort,” added Bisbee.

One recipient of this procedure, which indeed did save his life, is former Rochester City Councilor/Police Commissioner Lucien Levesque, who, in 2005, was extremely ill with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma a type of cancer affecting white blood cells. In Levesque’s case, tests revealed that he was able to donate his own stem cells for the Apheresis procedure, although, had he been unable to do so — as is frequently the case with patients — he would have had to rely on a donor match being found.

“I was able to donate enough good stem cells in one day,” said Levesque, who has now been cancer-free for the past seven years. In his case, he was treated by the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and he paid tribute to that facility.